Джеймс Паттерсон - The Games

“A friend?” Alicia asked. “Who?”

“Amelia Lopes,” I said.

Natalie blinked dumbly, and her chin retreated. Alicia stared at us in a kind of dazed disbelief.

“You talked with Amelia last night?” Natalie said. “How is she?”

“Fine; working hard on her research,” Tavia replied as she typed on her keyboard. “She says she hopes you’re okay.”

“Where is she?” Alicia asked, looking confused.

“Some town near Porto Alegre,” I said.

“Oh,” Alicia said. “I couldn’t remember what it was near before.”

“She’s, like, the smartest person ever, Mom,” Natalie said.

“I think your dad holds that title,” Cherie said.

“Sure, but, like, she has insight, you—”

“Sorry, here we go,” Tavia said, and hit Return.

The screen blinked to life.

A brilliant red logo — FAVELA JUSTICE — came spinning out of a void before leveling out on the screen.

Then it faded, revealing Andy Wise staring out at us. Still gagged and strapped to that heavy wooden chair, the billionaire looked worn from his experience.

Rayssa, the woman in the primitive mask, appeared, said, “We’ll let the evidence speak for itself.”

She vanished into a series of smash-cut video clips and images crafted like a news segment on Vice.com, a hip, visual story with Rayssa explaining what we were seeing in a voice-over. Documents fluttered onto a wooden table, dozens of them, and then hundreds, piling up on the table, falling off the sides, and drifting in the air.

One appeared in close-up for less than five seconds as Rayssa said, “These are copies of WE invoices for rebar, which is used to reinforce concrete. Mr. Wise’s company bought rebar in volume, right off the boat from Poland, for three hundred dollars per metric ton.”

Another document flashed by with the WE logo, too quick to read, and then dozens more, one after the other, rapid-fire, as Rayssa said, “But as internal accounting documents show, Mr. Wise’s company was charging the Brazilian government and Olympic authority three thousand dollars per metric ton.”

Over images of the Olympic village and the World Cup stadiums, she said, “Favela Justice gets that Mr. Wise is in business to make a profit, but a nine hundred percent profit? That’s gouging any way you look at it.”

The video went on showing images of cement mixers while Rayssa alleged that WE billed raw cement at nearly six times the amount other private construction firms did. Then the scene shifted to images of favelas and favela people all over Rio.

“The Brazilian government took on hundreds of billions in debt to finance the stadiums,” Rayssa said. “This was money that could have gone to better schools, better sanitary conditions in the favelas, hope for the vast majority of Brazilians who want a better life. Instead, like the Roman emperors who built the Colosseum, the government bought entertainment for the impoverished, and men like Wise pocketed the lion’s share of what could have been our future.”

The screen returned to that image of the billionaire in captivity.

“To enrich himself, Wise made us all poorer,” Rayssa said. “Took the money right out of our hands and made it look legal, and the poorest will suffer for it. Unless you vote to find him guilty. Then he owes the poor one billion in gold.”

The screen went blank.

There was a long silence in the room before Alicia looked at her mom and said in a trembling voice, “Is that all true? About Dad.”

“We have no idea whether those documents are real or fabricated,” Cherie said. “I don’t think these savages obey any rules of law.”

“You think favela people are savages, Mom?” Natalie said.

“I didn’t say that, I—”

“Yes, you did,” Alicia said. “But what if it is true, Mom? What if Dad did do all these things?”

“Your father has never knowingly broken a law in his life,” Cherie said.

“Knowingly,” Natalie said. “What does that mean?”

“It means he runs a gigantic company with operations all over the world and thousands of employees,” her mother snapped. “He can’t possibly know what every one of them does.”

“That’s true,” Alicia said. “But what about the price gouging? What if that’s true? What if he did it legally, but unethically?”

Cherie looked from one girl to the other in disbelief. “Are you two suffering from Stockholm syndrome or something? Siding with the people who kidnapped you and your dad?”

“No,” Natalie said in slurred protest. “Just asking if it’s true.”

“I can’t answer that,” Cherie said curtly. “But I’d expect you to support your father. Can you do that? Or should I send you both home to clear out your things?”

“Mom,” Alicia moaned. “We’re not saying—”

“Your father would move heaven and earth for you, and you don’t feel enough for him to take his side?”

“Mom, that’s not what we were saying at all,” Natalie said.

“That’s sure the way it sounded,” her mother said coldly. She got up from the couch, went into her bedroom, and closed the door behind her.

Thursday, August 4, 2016

9:00 a.m.

Thirty-Four Hours Before the Olympic Games Open

The reaction was worse than we’d expected. The world press grabbed and chewed on the six-minute video from Favela Justice, freeze-framing on the documents, which looked genuine enough. They were either excellent forgeries or the real thing.

Spontaneous protests broke out in favelas around Rio. In Alemão, police were shot at with semiautomatic weapons. Two cars were burned. From high up inside Vidigal favela, unseen gunmen fired several hundred rounds. The sounds of them echoed all the way to Copacabana.

Sirens went off all over the city as police who’d gathered for the Olympics now set out for the rioting slums. There had been footage on every channel the evening before, and that morning on the Today broadcast, Matt Lauer had brought up the possibility that the Rio Olympics might be canceled due to violence and unrest.

“This has been the rap against Rio as an Olympic host from the start,” Lauer said. “The International Olympic Committee was worried that the government would be unable to control the favelas, which would put the games in danger. Though Brazil has cracked down hard on crime in the slums over the past ten years, last night’s riots clearly show that there is widespread anger over the money spent on the Olympics and, before it, the World Cup. The potential for danger throughout the—”

The anchor stopped, listening to something being said in his earpiece. “We’re getting reports that the United States is threatening to pull its athletes unless their safety can be assured.

“I repeat, in a stunning development, the U.S. Olympic Committee has—”

General da Silva punched off the remote in a large conference room at the Olympic authority offices. Tavia and I were there along with the three top echelons of the security team that had been assembled in Rio for the games.

“This will not happen!” da Silva roared. “Not a chance. These Olympics are going to go down flawlessly from here on out. Are we clear?”

“Yes, sir,” many of them shouted back.

“I’ve spoken with the president and she has assured me that I will have whatever I need, right up to martial law in the favelas, for the games to go on.”

I winced. The day before the opening ceremony, and Rio was going to be painted black. Who wanted to go to some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, much less the Olympics, if there was the possibility of a violent uprising six miles away?